Why Reconstruction Failed

1. Slave to Citizen--The Reconstruction Experiment
2. Outcome--A Failure?
   1. In the Long Run, No--Enshrining Federal Supremacy and Equality in the Constitution
   2. In the Short Run, Yes
      1. Failure of the Reconstruction State Governments
      2. Ascendancy of White Supremacy--Toward Jim Crow
3. Why?
   1. Southern White Determination
      1. The "Insurgent Phase" of the Civil War
         1. Not to Gain Independence or Restore Slavery, BUT
         2. To Restore White Supremacy and "Home Rule"
      2. Methods
         1. Terror--The Ku Klux Klan, etc.
         2. Counter-Revolution
   2. Northern White Loss of Nerve
      1. No Stomach for Lengthy Central Rule
      2. The Issue of Land Reform--A Non-Starter
   3. Loss of Sympathy for the Reconstruction Project
      1. Persistent Northern White Racism
      2. The Issue of Corruption--The "Carpetbag" Regimes
      3. Disillusionment With Politics
      4. The "Proletarianization" of America
         1. Declining Opportunity
         2. Mass Immigration
         3. "A Nation of Employees"
         4. The 1870s--Labor vs. Capital
      5. Increasing Fear of the "Underclass"
4. Toward the Gilded Age